Not just Romney

But also could you imagine, say, John "the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation" McCain delivering a speech like this?

Or, say, Tancredo, Brownback, and Huckabee? Or how about Alan "our allegiance to God and His authority that has been the foundation stone of our nation's life" Keyes?
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Now if they'd just do their own research instead of appropriating the research of real scientists

Any bets as to how long until intelligent design propagandists proclaim this as "proof" of intelligent design?

The function of the appendix seems related to the massive amount of bacteria populating the human digestive system, according to an online report in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. There are more bacteria than human cells in the typical body. Most bacteria are good and help digest food.

But the flora in the intestines sometimes die or are purged. Diseases such as cholera or amoebic dysentery would clear the gut of useful bacteria. The appendix's job is to reboot the digestive system in that case.

The appendix "acts as a good safe house for bacteria," said Duke surgery professor Bill Parker, a co-author of the study. Its location — just below the normal one-way flow of food and germs in the large intestine in a sort of gut cul-de-sac — helps support the theory, he said.

Also, the worm-shaped organ outgrowth acts like a bacteria factory, cultivating good germs, Parker said.

That use is not needed in a modern industrialized society, Parker said. If a person's gut flora die, they usually can repopulate it easily with germs they pick up from other people, he said.

But before dense populations in modern times and during epidemics of cholera that affected a whole region, it wasn't as easy to grow back that bacteria and the appendix came in handy.

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Who's more progressive than the U.S. this week?

Colombia!

Gay couples in Colombia won the same social security rights as their straight counterparts in a court ruling called a major advance for homosexuals in this conservative Roman Catholic country.

In a decision embraced by rights groups but opposed by the church, the Constitutional Court said on Friday it extended health benefits long enjoyed by heterosexuals in common law marriages to same-sex couples.

The first nationwide law of its kind in Latin America, the measure allows homosexuals to include their partners in their health insurance plans.

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Friday Dead Racist Blogging: You're Too Good For Them Edition

During World War I the French government received a formal complaint from the U.S. military command that the French people were treating black American soldiers too well, and U.S. military authorities gave the French government instructions on how to treat black soldiers in discriminatory fashion.

--Joe Feagin, Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations, p. 64

These instructions, written by either John Pershing or Colonel Linard of the AEF, were titled "Secret information concerning the Black American Troops" and were issued on August 7, 1918. Here's the text, translated into English:

It is important for French officers who have been called upon to exercise command over black American troops, or to live in close contact with them, to have an exact idea of the position occupied by Negroes in the United States. The information set forth in the following communication ought to be given to these officers and it is to their interest to have these matters known and widely. disseminated. It will devolve likewise on the French Military Authorities, through the medium of the Civil Authorities, to give information on this subject to the French population residing in the cantonments occupied by American colored troops.

1. The American attitude upon the Negro question may seem a matter for discussion to many French minds. But we French are not in our province if we undertake to discuss what some call "prejudice." American opinion is unanimous on the "color question," and does not admit of any discussion.

The increasing number of Negroes in the United States (about 15,000,000) would create for the white race in the Republic a menace of degeneracy were it not that an impassable gulf has been made between them.

As this danger does not exist for the French race, the French public has become accustomed to treating the Negro with familiarity and indulgence.

This indulgence and this familiarity are matters of grievous concern to the Americans. They consider them an affront to their national policy. They are afraid that contact with the French will inspire in black Americans aspirations which to them appear intolerable. It is of the utmost importance that every effort be made to avoid profoundly estranging American opinion.

Although a citizen of the United States, the black man is regarded by the white American as an inferior being with whom relations of business or service only are possible. The black is constantly being censured for his want of intelligence and discretion, his lack of civic and professional conscience, and for his tendency toward undue familiarity.

The vices of the Negro are a constant menace to the American who has to repress them sternly. For instance, the black American troops in France have, by themselves, given rise to as many complaints for attempted rape as all the rest of the army. And yet the soldiers sent us have been the choicest with respect to physique and morals, for the number disqualified at the time of mobilization was enormous.

Conclusion

1. We must prevent the rise of any pronounced degree of intimacy between French officers and black officers. We may be courteous and amiable with these last, but we cannot deal with them on the same plane as with the white American officers without deeply wounding the latter. We must not eat with them, must not shake hands or seek to talk or meet with them outside of the requirements of military service.

2. We must not commend too highly the black American troops, particularly in the presence of Americans. It is all right to recognize their good qualities and their services, but only in moderate terms strictly in keeping with the truth.

3. Make a point of keeping the native cantonment population from "spoiling" the Negroes. Americans become greatly incensed at any public expression of intimacy between white women with black men. They have recently uttered violent protests against a picture in the "Vie Parisienne" entitled "The Child of the Desert" which shows a woman in a "cabinet particulier" with a Negro. Familiarity on the part of white women with black men is furthermore a source of profound regret to our experienced colonials who see in it an overweening menace to the prestige of the white race.

Military authority cannot intervene directly in this question, but it can through the civil authorities exercise some influence on the population.

Taken from here.
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Rich white kids come out ahead? Whoda thunk it?

"Affirmative action means that well-qualified (white) kids won't get to go to the school of their choice because of some ill-qualified (colored) kid!"

Oh, wait. No it doesn't.

Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data have found that, on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions' minimum admissions standards.

Five years ago, two researchers working for the Educational Testing Service, Anthony Carnevale and Stephen Rose, took the academic profiles of students admitted into 146 colleges in the top two tiers of Barron's college guide and matched them up against the institutions' advertised requirements in terms of high school grade point average, SAT or ACT scores, letters of recommendation, and records of involvement in extracurricular activities. White students who failed to make the grade on all counts were nearly twice as prevalent on such campuses as black and Hispanic students who received an admissions break based on their ethnicity or race.

Who are these mediocre white students getting into institutions such as Harvard, Wellesley, Notre Dame, Duke, and the University of Virginia? A sizable number are recruited athletes who, research has shown, will perform worse on average than other students with similar academic profiles, mainly as a result of the demands their coaches will place on them.

A larger share, however, are students who gained admission through their ties to people the institution wanted to keep happy, with alumni, donors, faculty members, administrators, and politicians topping the list.

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Everyone's after our wimmin

The first difference which strikes us is that of colour. Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarfskin, or in the scarfskin itself; whether it proceeds from the colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immovable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them as uniformly as is the preference of the Oran-ootan for the black woman over those of his own species.

Uh, yeah. Actually, as it turns out, the "Oran-ootan" prefers blondes, too:

Sibu the orang-utan has miffed his Dutch keepers by refusing to mate with females and showing sexual interest only in tattooed human blondes.

Apenheul Primate Park hoped Sibu would become its breeding male when he arrived two years ago, but orang-utans aren't his type.

"He chases them, or ignores them, but he doesn't do what he should do," said a spokeswoman for the park.

Instead, Sibu fancies his female keepers, especially blondes. That, the spokeswoman said, was common for orang-utans but Sibu has a fetish for tattoos, harking back to a heavily tattooed keeper who reared him.

"Orang-utans have special interests in special subjects. Sibu happens to like tattoos," she said.

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This just in

"MINNEAPOLIS (AP) A Minnesota judge has denied Idaho Sen. Larry Craig's bid to withdraw his guilty plea in an airport men's room sex sting."

Nyah.
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Compassionate conservatism at its finest

Bush has vetoed SCHIP, though Congress may be able to override it. It passed with enough votes in the Senate, but they were short some in the House. John Kerry had some unkind words to say about this action:

"The President's twisted rationale that he opposes 'federalizing' health care is a hollow excuse for undermining a successful effort to give Governors the control and the tools to deliver health care for kids who desperately need it. President Bush conveniently forgot that he ran for reelection with a promise to give health care to millions more children and now as a lame duck president he is working to take it away. It seems George Bush was for kids' health care before he was against it."

And Atrios dug up a post from a few months ago that highlights Bush's sheer malignant indifference to the lower class:

"The immediate goal is to make sure there are more people on private insurance plans. I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room."

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McCain -- still not getting it

In his efforts to quell criticism over his boneheaded remarks, McCain has tried reassuring people that he would, in fact, vote for a Muslim--if said Muslim were the best candidate:

Later, McCain said, "I would vote for a Muslim if he or she was the candidate best able to lead the country and defend our political values."

But since our political values are Judeo-Christian, it stands to reason that a Muslim would never be the best candidate to defend said values, right? Right.

But even with such a non-apology, McCain still hasn't backed down from his other idiotic statements:

While campaigning in New Hampshire on Sunday, he said that the most qualified person could be president, no matter his or her religion.

"It's almost Talmudic. We are a nation that was based on Judeo-Christian values. That means respect for all of human rights and dignity. That's my principle values and ideas, and that's what I think motivated our founding fathers," McCain said.

"Based on Judeo-Christian values", are we?

It's official. Either McCain is a damned liar, which tells us what his "principle values" are, or he's completely ignorant of the history of the country he wants to lead.

And since when do "Judeo-Christian values" mean "respect for all of human rights and dignity"? Certainly our founding fathers weren't motivated by that--the only people whose rights and dignity they gave a damn about were white, male landowners like themselves.

...wait. Only concerned with rich, white males? Maybe McCain does know what he's talking about.
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Nerts

The Federal Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would have protected LGBT people from job discrimination, no longer does that. Now it's just LGB people:

The bill was introduced in Congress in April and, in its original form would have made it illegal to fire, refuse to hire or refuse to promote an employee based on the person's sexual orientation or gender identity.

Late last week all references to transsexuals and gender identity was removed in a backroom deal orchestrated by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.).

Frank, one of only two out members of Congress, is the lead sponsor of ENDA in the House. His decision to split off transgender rights infuriated LGBT activists.

On Sunday he tried to quell the dissent, saying removing trans rights was the only way to get the rest of the measure passed.

"It is never possible for us at any given time to get everything that we would like, and so we have to make difficult choices," said Frank.

...

"Detracting from the sense of celebration many of us feel about that is regret that under the current political situation, we do not have sufficient support in the House to include in that bill explicit protection for people who are transgender."

Frank went on to say that it boils down to "whether we should pass up the chance to adopt a very good bill because it has one major gap."

The move also lost the bill co-sponsor Tammy Baldwin, the only other openly gay member of Congress.
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